Natalia Antonovahttp://nataliaantonova.com
The sky is high. The Czar is far.Fri, 31 Jul 2015 10:54:31 +0000enhourly1http://wordpress.com/http://0.gravatar.com/blavatar/6ba5dde2e2322a4857a7fbebebedaeef?s=96&d=http%3A%2F%2Fs2.wp.com%2Fi%2Fbuttonw-com.pngNatalia Antonovahttp://nataliaantonova.com
A song for your birthdayhttp://nataliaantonova.com/2015/07/04/a-song-for-your-birthday/
http://nataliaantonova.com/2015/07/04/a-song-for-your-birthday/#commentsSat, 04 Jul 2015 12:14:14 +0000http://nataliaantonova.com/?p=4649More A song for your birthday]]>On your birthday I want to be together again
The others’ birthdays are all vague to me
Hahaha, I say, I’m bad with names and dates, you guys
And start getting drunk in too much of a hurry.

An old fortuneteller said the whips of hell been chasing me
But it was when I was extra good that you took off your belt
What the hell do those bitches know anyway?
Slavic women swear by them – which would explain a lot.

They say you throw some impressive shadow, babe,
Giants can’t help it if all their gestures are grand
That’s why your ladies-in-waiting carry poison in their rings
While you let your pets sharpen their teeth on your throne.

Power is power, was it the heat of your whisper in my ear –
Or just summer creeping up the back stairs again?
Those grass stains never did come out of my jeans
My mother has her own score to settle with the delivery man.

I’m a big girl all the way, but I bite the pillow at night
It was you who taught me that some stories must wait to be told
Those seeds of the future you brought me on your tongue –
I kissed the red clay ground and still wait for them to grow.

Baby, do you remember, stars dropping like recon units from the sky
You and I, the hood of the car cooling, transferring energy to us
I didn’t know this kind of beauty was even possible
Let alone that it was a product of the laws of physics.

Baby, on your birthday, it was always you who gave the gifts
Some I wanted, some you pressed into my hand anyway
And when your sleazebag accountant said the balance was due
I put my hair up and decorated the sidewalk with my bags

I had a dream I was in the backseat with Nabokov
Hot leather stuck to my bare legs
Your smile in the rearview, those expensive teeth
Asking – Darlin, will you spring for the gas?

Rules are only for children and good Protestants
You said when I saw you last, teetering on the stair
I had that funny walk and I have it still
Ain’t no room inside me for a bigger affair.

]]>http://nataliaantonova.com/2015/07/04/a-song-for-your-birthday/feed/4view from mount holyokeNataliaAdelinahttp://nataliaantonova.com/2015/04/07/adelina/
http://nataliaantonova.com/2015/04/07/adelina/#commentsTue, 07 Apr 2015 12:50:38 +0000http://nataliaantonova.com/?p=4596More Adelina]]>Thank God for the side streets
Exhaling fog this time of year
Letting me step off the boulevard
And giving me a place to drown
My memories of Adelina.

This landscape is like a video game
I interact with it
Pull mysteries from it
Like silver fish from the blue sea.
Beneath each tile, each rail, each snail
I suspect there is a chance
To trigger dialogue
That would lead me back.

Better the white
Better a blank
Hopeless and upright
All edges gone
Nothing to snag.

It was Adelina’s husband
Who turned out to be
The snake in the garden.
Husbands are awfully keen on me.

He was walking along the shore
Back from a war
A crushed hummingbird in his jacket pocket
On his chest a tarnished locket
Of Adelina’s soft red hair.
“Sweetheart, you better beware,”
He said in a voice as thick as winter jam,
As heavy as glaze ice on a wing.

“Ever want something other
Than a silver spoon in your mouth?”
He said. “You’ll be gone before the month is out.”
“I will not be your man, nor will I be your love.
Honey, you’re just butter to a knife.
Honey, you’re honey, and you stick to my fangs.
If I don’t hold you down, you are everywhere.”

I was on vacation,
I was daring and fierce
I was full of an angry joy
There was salt in my braid from the waves
That teased and bit the shore.
I said, “You’ve been gone a long time.
Do you think there are places on you not good enough for my tongue?
Do you think the back of my throat and you can’t be good friends?”

“Keep asking, keep asking those questions,” Adelina’s husband said.

So it went.
The barmen in the stone halls winked at me
I got in everywhere like smoke and read poems for free
I didn’t let love and her twin sister, pain,
Sit down at my table.
I was exceedingly well-paid
In trinkets and honey and beds.
The thin skin of rabbits hugged my fingers
Until the day I ran into Adelina
With her outstretched hand –
So fine that I took off my gloves
And almost by accident
Felt the pulse of her pale wrist.
“He says you’re a poet –
I came to see for myself.”
The smoothness of her face
Was mathematically impossible.
Free of the locket her hair
Burned like a sunset-dipped halo.
I wanted to say that I wasn’t a poet
Not until this very moment.

We met in bars and talked for hours
Talked until the stars dissolved
Until the weathercock gave us the side-eye and crowed.

Adelina loved books and freedom,
Stitching saints’ medals into collars
Drawing fate on espresso foam
Wearing a chain with bells on a thin ankle
Splashing her cheeks with champagne at dawn.

She took me riding in the forest
It was so quiet we heard bluebells ring.
We lay on the tombs of old kings
High above sea level
And told stories
And imagined the marrow of the old bones beneath us
Leaking, weeping with desire.
Wasn’t it good to be alive?

Adelina’s kisses plump and rich
Breasts to fill a good brandy glass
She tasted like syrup squeezed from moss
And laughed at my metaphors.
She twisted my braid around her neck
Said I was killing her.
Like a shadow I’d crouch at her feet
When it was time for her to go.

“Promise me, promise
That you will be good and famous.
It will be my reward
In this life of wearing yellowed lace.
I didn’t marry well
Though you might disagree
With that last bit.”

One day, Adelina’s husband came
Boots thudding, joints groaning in the evening cold.
He invited me to speak as adults.
He pressed bluebells into my palm
Shredded and melted from his body heat
These sorry gifts
He said Adelina made her choice
He said her curiosity was satisfied
Never come between a man and his wife
Be generous to beggars, pray at night.

I threw the petals into my drink
I got so drunk, but I could still think.
Only one remedy for that
I let him lead me by the hand
To the cellar.
He spat on his fingers and promised to be gentle.
Still I cried, my “no, no” very slowly giving ground
To my “yes, yes.”
He said I had an ass for tearing
Flesh for weighing, too expensive,
Like a stack of veils at a silk merchant’s.
I slapped him for it
But my hand trembled.

I pressed the trace of his mouth on my collarbone
Like a button buried beneath my skin.
Then ran to stand in the light of her windows
Just to stand in those pale, flat rectangles
Imagining they were a magic circle.
Adelina leaned out of the window once
Shook her head, made the sign of the cross
Shrugged. Her hair was like rays of a departing sun.
She turned away and soundlessly closed the shutters.
In my mind’s eye I saw her take down a book
And cross her legs by the fire.
I saw the way pleasure at beauty curved
The corners of her mouth upward.
I vowed that my words would find her.
I vowed to one day be in there with her
Invited in from the cold.

I took the speediest train going north
Tearing through the countryside too fast
To let my eyes focus. It was a mercy.
Still I felt the dead kings rise
To wave a bone-creaking goodbye.
I came under the stone arch of my home
My children rushed out, hugging my skirt
They said it had been too long.
I handed out rose wafers, seashells,
Salt crystals like crowns,
A song I took from the pulsing throat of a nightingale,
Drops of frozen dragon blood set in gold,
Blinking doll eyes, ticking clock hearts,
A rainbow soft as sorbet.
I bought my way out of their recriminations
Flossed their teeth with silver spiderwebs
And put them to bed.

I walked into our garden
My husband was grilling raw meat
Sprinkling lemon juice and cursing his hangnails.
He fed me with his own rough fingers
Traced the insides of my mouth
Undid my blouse
Listened to the irregularities of my heart
Asked me about the south.
I said, “Why does this heart stumble and burn?
Why do I feel as though
It was me you laid down on these coals?
When does it stop?”

“Never,” he said, and smiled into his beard.
“You’re an artist now. You belong to it.”

Banya by Zinaida Serebryakova. 1926]]>http://nataliaantonova.com/2015/04/07/adelina/feed/16Jean-Honoré_Fragonard_-_The_Stolen_KissNataliabanya serebryakovaComplaintshttp://nataliaantonova.com/2015/01/06/complaints/
http://nataliaantonova.com/2015/01/06/complaints/#commentsTue, 06 Jan 2015 08:08:36 +0000http://nataliaantonova.com/?p=4549More Complaints]]>I miss carbohydrates
I miss the conviction
That rotten floorboards beneath my feet
Will give in at some later date
When I’ve moved on to greater things
That are owed to me by fate.
I miss kissing him
Outside that restaurant
(See how I’m not addressing him?
It must prove that I am repentant).
I miss saying “no” as easily
As sliding hand into glove;
Come to think of it
I miss my good winter things
And how unlike other phenomena
They could always be counted on.
I miss staring contests with the bottom of the glass
And I equally miss losing them.
I don’t miss pouring my own wine,
But I do miss choosing it.
I miss when rebellion meant
A nothing that came of nothing
As worn beneath my coat
I miss taking for granted
My ability to rain down a bit of destruction
In an insignificant corner
Of an altogether backward
Permanently twilit
Part of the world.
I miss being nobody’s vassal
Unless you counted those pale moth wings
Like the evening’s fluttering eyelids
And I’m sure you didn’t.
I miss split ends cut off by that woman
Split ends like golden forks in the road
Either way beset by trouble
Either way portending love.
I miss not missing my handsome jailer
Feeling for keys on his belt
And saying “it’s over” to my friends
Like an apology
For a terrible screw-up
A disaster so immense
That they had to cancel
Important dinner plans.
While I’m at it, I miss real friends
Those who don’t mind putting a blanket
Over my shoulders and theirs
To go and watch meteorites
Tear through the dark seams of the sky.
“One undone, another undone,
They’ll say it about us someday –
They were lovely as they shone
Why couldn’t they stay.”
And I miss the force per unit area
We had from sitting next to each other
When it felt that should it get a little colder
We could pull down the sky together
Spread it over our touching knees
And I could quit worrying my caged predator teeth
And bite its soft corner.
I miss the men
Who’ll think it’s about them
But not all, not all.
I miss the dog paused on the stair
Gazing into the changing shadows of the hall
Waiting for whatever was next
And whatever was next was nothing at all –
And how lucky that was for us both.
I miss the Carolina spring
Beautiful like a woman in a bar with someone else
Beautiful like only that which cannot be possessed
Leaning against the fence
And describing the sun
To disbelieving gnomes and spiders beneath the leaves
See, I knew I was going to write
I didn’t know there’d be a price like this.
The snow is already busy concealing the footprints
Of boys who won’t return from war
Having hidden behind their broad backs
I have missed them all.
Winter. Thaw. By Arkhip Kuindzhi, 1895.

The Russian Patriarch gave Dmitry Kiselyov, Russia’s top propagandist, a church award. I was baptized in the Russian Orthodox Church and, even though the church has always taken orders from the government in Russia (it was never the other way around, as many people think), such acts still somehow sadden me, especially because I still go to church, and still find it a powerful experience. Churches have always been horrifyingly imperfect – I suppose they’re forever making up for it with rhetoric about hell, and casting undesirables out, etc. – but there is something about this particular church, right now, that rubs its imperfection in your face so much that it tempts you to despair. When even your conservative, God-fearing relatives are bitterly saying that “the patriarch is a bad one,” it really makes you wonder, just how bad it’s all going to get in our lifetime.

On a related (yes, related) note, Russia’s Investigative Committee, the most loud and loyal of the oprichnina, has now opened a criminal investigation against the wife of an Alexey Navalny ally (Navalny is Russia’s most prominent anti-corruption crusader; the latest politically motivated case against him will see him go away for a decade if the prosecutor has his way), who organized literary festivals. The Investigative Committee’s statements and criminal investigations oftentimes seem deliberately farcical, but the farce involves real victims, people with families. Writers are often curious about what goes on in the heads of people who victimize others in the name of carrying out orders – but the truth is, compartmentalization is an awesome tool.

I have this idea that a lot of us should be grateful to be alive in this horrible time – and not because, as the constant refrain goes, “It can always get worse.” It can, but I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about how this time has forced so many of us to turn mental corners we were too lazy or too scared to turn before. How this time has burrowed into our hearts like a worm, a reminder that the number of heartbeats is finite, always finite. And what will you do with your nearly imperceptible, finite heartbeats? And what will you do? Goodness, for example, can never attack, it can only defend itself. A lot of people have forgotten about that right now, but one day, they’ll remember.

Every day is a chance to turn it around. Every day that we are alive. Tick tock. Don’t despair. Don’t despair. You’ve no right.

]]>http://nataliaantonova.com/2014/12/23/nobodys-hopeless-everything-is-broken/feed/1NataliaTemporary sheltershttp://nataliaantonova.com/2014/12/18/temporary-shelters/
http://nataliaantonova.com/2014/12/18/temporary-shelters/#commentsThu, 18 Dec 2014 01:48:09 +0000http://nataliaantonova.com/?p=4539More Temporary shelters]]>The snow falls silently on the graves of the people I love
On the graves of the people I would have loved
If given half a chance
The sky above my house is made of remembrances of raven wings
And amethyst
The pear trees my dead grandfather planted
Offer their bark up to be kissed.

*****

I was in London recently and I was very happy – in a way that I’ve never been before while in London, my unattainable city, the place I’ve always loved and which had never loved me back. I think this happiness came from not caring.

“You’ll love an Englishman, of course,” my grandmother’s fierce cousin, the late Yevgeniya Andreyevna, told me once. “And loving him will be like cracking open a snail shell – that is to say slimy and cold.”

I was seventeen, had never had a boyfriend (yet alone loved anyone), and didn’t realize she was making a prophecy. She was very fond of making casual prophecies back then, as easily as she refilled my wine glass at dinner, and every one came true eventually.

I remembered her when I walked through Mayfair, when I couldn’t tell what it was that beat inside my chest – my heart or a pair of dark raven wings.

And I drank champagne in her memory when the city lay beneath my feet – a scattering of rare jewels, satisfyingly hard to the touch.

You cannot love London too much. You have to turn your back on it and scowl at it over your bare shoulder and then turn away again. Possibly for years. And London, being London, will be proud for a while, but then it will ask you back for a spell, and it will make you very happy during the whole of it. Only you must always say goodbye first and close the door very firmly behind you. Go under the cover of darkness, go, go, one boot in front of the other. Life is getting shorter, life is thinning out and chipping on the edges, all you can carry away with you is, as usual, God and love. Everything else will be too damn heavy and not worth the strain on your shoulder.

*****

Øystein Bogen and I gave a joint seminar on the Ukraine crisis & the propaganda war surrounding it in Oslo a few weeks ago. I think we did a good job – well, Øystein certainly did, I think I became too emotional in places – and I think it was that evening, in that beautiful city where candles burn on tables throughout the winter, that I accepted that the world has changed irrevocably, and there is nothing I can do about it, except tell the truth as I see it.

I associate a lot of pain with my background these days. These veins that run through me – Ukraine, the U.S., and Russia – they all bleed quite a startling red. For the obvious reasons.

I’ve struggled against the new normal, “You can’t be real,” I said. It was like arguing with weather. And it was Oslo that whispered about the futility of that into my willing ear. So dark it was and so lovely. I know now why they call Norway troll country. Or I almost know. (Will I come back? I seriously hope to come back)

*****

In Moscow, even before the ruble starting crashing, there was already electricity in the air. Static. Hands touched in ways that made you gasp.

I lit small lanterns and Christmas lights and listened to the wind lashing the khrushchyovka. Nothing says “temporary” like a khrushchyovka – nothing says “shadows and dust,” nothing says “only love and God.”

I went to the theater and saw my own work up on the stage – or a reflection of my work – and there was joy and outrage in the audience, and I was so grateful. My husband introduced me to the coat check ladies as “the author.” He would do that, of course. He would drag me backstage afterwards, too. If it wasn’t for him, I’d just leave anonymously – but he’s a different breed of person, not shy, and not ashamed of me. This is something I will also always be grateful for (I think I am now at that age when I can begin to use the word “always” and actually mean it).

I’ve been so bitterly disappointed with Moscow, but even so I have clutched its gifts to my chest. Would I have dared to become a mother anywhere else? It was the wildness of this place, the bones exposed through the supple flesh of civilization, that said “Jump!” Now Lev has gotten to be very tall for a toddler, and is mastering sarcasm. The top of his head smells like last night’s dreams. He seems to be growing so fast that I want to hit “pause” – already looking longingly at babies in prams and remembering when he was tiny.

And I am constantly saying “Oh Moscow” and it comes out differently each time.

*****

The book is going well so far. (What book? THE book. Or possibly A book. I don’t know right now)

*****

And I woke up again in my father’s house and the night was already dented in several places, losing out to one of those slow, scruffy winter dawns. And I said, “I am not prepared to go on this journey, but I am always going on it anyway, I’m not sure where the journey ends and where I begin. It feels like a dress rehearsal for death. Or life eternal. I can’t tell anymore.” And there was nothing anyone could say to that, but there was still good coffee in the offing, and sometimes, that’s the best that any of us can hope for.

I woke up this morning to some people asking me if Vladimir Putin was “hitting on” the First Lady of China. He had been caught on camera wrapping a shawl/blanket around her shoulders at the APEC Summit. Cue hysteria!

I explained that if a woman looks cold, a Russian man will drop everything and immediately give her a blanket/his own jacket/whatever. It’s not a sex thing, it’s just seen as good manners in Russia. This doesn’t, of course, mean that this gesture can never ever be flirtatious – but honestly, if a Russian man is flirting with you, there will be other ways in which he’ll let you know.

Protecting a woman from the cold is PARTICULARLY seen as good manners in Russia because of the complex cultural ways in which Russians treat the whole idea of being cold. For example, they always assume that being cold can make you very, very sick. Most well-mannered Russian men don’t even *think* about it when they offer you their coat outside – for them, it’s an automatic gesture.

Inevitably a friend wrote in to tell me this,

But don’t you think that Russian “chivalry” is more than a little sexist? It basically assumes that women are too weak to take care of themselves.

OK. So. People are entitled to their views on chivalry. But once again, it has important cultural contexts in Russia.

For one thing, Russia is not a very friendly place. It’s a macho society, where men are forever obsessed with the question of who’s dominating whom, and aggression is seen as a necessary survival trait, even in social situations.

Russian chivalry is one of the few ways in which people who don’t know each other very well will treat each other with politeness and kindness. I think this is one of the main reasons why it’s important to preserve it.

Secondly, Russian women don’t find it degrading. If anything, it’s one of the few expressions of hypermasculinity that isn’t made at the expense of a woman. It’s never about assuming that she is helpless – helplessness in women, I would argue, is NOT prized in Russia – it’s about recognition of her femininity as deserving of special attention from a man who, in most other social situations, is expected to act a bit brutish.

Honestly, no Russian man draping a blanket over a woman’s shoulders is thinking, “Stupid bitch can’t do it herself, and I, therefore, shall prove my masculinity by doing it for her.” It’s more like, “We can share a gentle moment in what is essentially an adverse world.”

Russian life is still built on ideas of survival and Russian women are the classic survivalists. They are expected to have both careers and babies. They are expected to do all of the housework and look glamorous while at it. Russian chivalry is a slight nod of recognition to all that – and it doesn’t, I would argue, obscure the very real challenges women do indeed face.

Most Russian gender norms are all kinds of screwed up. I wouldn’t put Russian chivalry on that list, though. Russian chivalry is nice. It’s sweet. And it particularly makes for a good change of pace when you’re used to men who won’t even *think* of, say, helping you with a heavy parcel (because God forbid they make you look “helpless”).

It may not always be appropriate at a political summit, but neither is it the sleazy, “OMG HE DID NOT” moment some people are trying to make it out to be.

Of all the things to be angry about when it comes to Putin, this just isn’t it.

*shrug*

]]>http://nataliaantonova.com/2014/11/11/for-gods-sake-putin-was-not-hitting-on-peng-liyuan-also-theres-nothing-wrong-with-russian-chivalry/feed/10NataliaAll the king’s sweets (a song for overgrown children)http://nataliaantonova.com/2014/10/30/all-the-kings-sweets-a-song-for-overgrown-children/
http://nataliaantonova.com/2014/10/30/all-the-kings-sweets-a-song-for-overgrown-children/#commentsThu, 30 Oct 2014 10:11:19 +0000http://nataliaantonova.com/?p=4521More All the king’s sweets (a song for overgrown children)]]>When you walk out into this night
You will find what you’re looking for
– Or maybe a little bit more.

Gunpowder on a stick
So sweet that it hurts to lick;
A border where lace confronts thigh
Patrolled by a a jealous eye;
A star in the forehead,
A golden sieve,
And all you can see
Is all you believe.

My darling, I took the rather bold step
Of stabbing the dragon
With a pen
In the back.
But nobody comes
And nobody cares,
I’m alone with the beast
I have not taken care.
He’s rather amused, giggling into his gold,
He’s not shy with his smile
Though his fangs smell like rot.

My darling, other heroes will come,
To fuck all the women, to drink all the rum;
I will not be among them, I was silly, it seems,
My bones will be toothpicks,
My memory will dim.
They’ll make armor from dragon scales
And wear it down to the pub
While my scattered molecules
Still demand all the credit.
(I told you, I’m silly,
I told you, it hurts)

You keep trying to reach me
Through other men
When they put their hands
On my exposed neck.
I wish you would fucking stop it,
But honey runs thicker than water.

This is my city, and I won’t share,
I’ll scrape the moonlight off the asphalt
I’ll pack away the flaxen air.
You’re only allowed
To exhale.

I told you, being a wife
I’m as dull as a butter knife,
Dull blades hurt so much more;
The last czar’s daughters would know.

Pearls of moisture
Gleam like satellites
In the spiderwebs
Between the trees at night.

Pearls of moisture
On my skin
Swiped by a burglar
As my years grew thin.

When we were young
We didn’t know
Our lover was night;
Night was the cream on the upper lip
Clotted to butter
From body heat;
Night was the watcher
On the cemetery wall;
Night was the angel
In the hospital hall;
Paint peeling off walls
Like silks off your mistress,
Tell me, who among us
Would dare take it all back?

]]>http://nataliaantonova.com/2014/10/30/all-the-kings-sweets-a-song-for-overgrown-children/feed/7kiev panoramaNataliavery long engagementNever a place to hide: on helping bring Arthur Kopit’s “Wings” to Russia (and a few other things besides)http://nataliaantonova.com/2014/10/24/never-a-place-to-hide-on-helping-bring-arthur-kopits-wings-to-russia-and-a-few-other-things-besides/
http://nataliaantonova.com/2014/10/24/never-a-place-to-hide-on-helping-bring-arthur-kopits-wings-to-russia-and-a-few-other-things-besides/#commentsFri, 24 Oct 2014 20:38:30 +0000http://nataliaantonova.com/?p=4512More Never a place to hide: on helping bring Arthur Kopit’s “Wings” to Russia (and a few other things besides)]]>New York’s Lark Play Development Center & Moscow’s Lyubimovka Festival recently conspired to have several great American plays be translated and adapted for the Russian stage. I was tapped to translate and adapt Arthur Kopit’s “Wings.” After Arthur and the other playwrights participating in the workshop flew in, we took my first draft and worked on the adaptation together, alongside director Daniel Romanov and a wonderful cast with the great Varvara Pushkarskaya in the lead.

At the same time that we were preparing a dramatic reading of “Wings” at the Meyerhold Center (named after Vsevolod Meyerhold, executed by Stalin in 1940), it was announced that Moscow’s Teatr.doc, where I began my career as a playwright in Russia, was being thrown out of its iconic basement facilities by the Moscow authorities.

While I was working on “Wings,” a number of people politely asked me why I was focused on bringing American drama to the Russian stage in the midst of sanctions, acrimony, threats of war, confusion, a destabilized and bloodied Ukrainian Donbass, and so on. “Do you even think it’s worth it?” the implied question was.

In the best of times, I never thought it was possible to retreat into art. The idea of art as a kind of pretty meadow where you can hide from life’s general BS always struck me as distinctly Soviet – and when I say “Soviet” I’m talking about the bureaucratic side of things, as opposed to the human side, because I mean no disrespect to the great artists produced by the USSR.

There’s a reason why “Swan Lake” played on Soviet TVs during the putsch in August of 1991. Officials had a view of art that was both utilitarian and naive. Art was a pretty picture you could transmit in place of reality – i.e. real art had nothing to do with reality.

This view of art endures, somewhat, in Russia to this day. It’s why an anti-constitutional law banning obscene language in movies and songs (books with obscenities must now come with special stickers) was passed. The idea of art as pretty, ineffectual, and uncontroversial is the idea that appeals to bureaucrats the most.

Still, there is what officials want to believe – and then there is reality.

The reality is this: working in the theater is a battle from which there is no retreat. Even when times are relatively good and no one is going around trying to shut down independent theaters – but especially so when times are not good. Especially so when you are scared. And sad. And tired. And when you can’t make up your mind as to what displeases you more – the world outside or the world inside you.

When I was translating Arthur Kopit’s “Wings,” I had to take mental health breaks several times. The play was constantly making me cry.

There are lots of reasons why a great play should make someone cry. My reason for crying was the reminder that it all comes to nought. The play’s heroine is a strong woman, a former stunt pilot, suffering from a stroke. She is forever altered. She will never go back.

(“There is now no ship to bear me hence, and I must indeed abide the Doom of Men, whether I will or nill: the loss and the silence”)

We are such fragile creatures, really. Nobody wants to be reminded of that.

In recent years, I had to deal with the loss of a family home, the second such loss I had to experience so far. I then had to deal with the loss of my beloved job. Now I’m dealing with the reality that theater is also not some mystical island upon which the forces of darkness may never encroach. Quite the opposite.

I often think of myself as Arthur Kopit’s heroine now. Flying through the darkness and unable to tether myself to somewhere safe. And you know, I realized that this is perfectly alright.

When you know exactly what is happening to you, when you are no longer trying to hide from it, when you cease to be a character in a horror movie, running screaming from the danger to the sadistic delight of your pursuer, you become free – so free that you’re not even sure what to do with this freedom at first. It’s like living under a molehill for all of your life and then finding out that there is a sky.

In the West, we are often used to thinking that we define the world – we are the observers, others are the subjects of our observation. As a product of at least three distinct cultures, I’ve always known what utter crap that is. When an entity like Lark collaborates with an entity such as Lyubimovka, I get the chance to demonstrate precisely why it is crap. Because when a play like “Wings” comes to Moscow, it’s Russians who are cast as the observers, for example.

This is why such collaborations are important – and this is why everyone asking me about “the point” of bringing American drama to Russia now is, in fact, misguided. We are doing what the entire Russian Foreign Ministry (which knows a thing or two about the high art of the irrational) cannot dream of doing. We see a text expand so much that it becomes a kind of space, a platform, a field – where people from different backgrounds engage each other as normal human beings.

You can’t hide in art, it’s true, but then again, that’s only because art exists beyond the state of hiding.

And so I’m really grateful to Lark & Lyubimovka. And to Arthur and Daniel, for being so good at what they do, and so good in general. And grateful to the actors, of course.

The night before we showed “Wings” in Moscow.]]>http://nataliaantonova.com/2014/10/24/never-a-place-to-hide-on-helping-bring-arthur-kopits-wings-to-russia-and-a-few-other-things-besides/feed/5Nataliacast of wings and me and arthur and danya filteredA statement on the state of thingshttp://nataliaantonova.com/2014/10/17/a-statement-on-the-state-of-things/
http://nataliaantonova.com/2014/10/17/a-statement-on-the-state-of-things/#commentsFri, 17 Oct 2014 14:21:00 +0000http://nataliaantonova.com/?p=4504More A statement on the state of things]]>I dreamed that a former lover took me by the hair
Wrapped my hair around his wrist
Like a chain.
He beat the people he loved with me,
Beat them bloody
So that they could never hurt him again.
And in the melee
I wondered where he ended and I began.
I called my hairdresser and said,
“Pasha, why did you make my hair golden again,
So that it attracts the attention of thieves
And other people of questionable character?”
“Sanctions, my darling, sanctions,” Pasha said.
“We all have to invest our precious metals on the sly.”
I dreamed that my mother’s television
Detached itself from the wall as gracefully as it could
And volunteered to be my headstone.
My mother shook her head and said,
“Well, I can’t say I’m surprised by the situation,
As you know, someone is trying to steal our Arctic,
Just pack it away and steal it,
In a suitcase with a false bottom,
A man in aviator sunglasses and a rudely colored Hawaiian shirt,
Is trying to do it,
Just like that.”
People were dying.
In the kitchen of a khrushchyovka
That forever has bits flaking off of it, like another callus
On the groaning, unkempt body of the city,
Cigarettes were being crushed to death
And people shook their heads
At the horrific carnage and cruelty.
I dreamed that someone kept calling my number
And telling me that I could come home now,
But when I looked over my shoulder,
All I saw was the eternal return.
And I said to it, “That’s OK, that’s really OK,
We’ve been here before, you and I,
Come at me, bro.
Come the fuck at me, bro.”
But even then thermodynamic free energy
Was packing its bags and putting them on the sidewalk,
All aggrieved
Making a big show of checking the time,
Waiting for a cab.
It was getting so much colder.
Tears were already
Freezing at the corners of my eyes,
Like tiny icicles, like daggers for a mouse,
And I was too proud to say
That they were the only weapons
I could fuck shit up with
At this time.

……

]]>http://nataliaantonova.com/2014/10/17/a-statement-on-the-state-of-things/feed/1Nataliatime is a flat circleWhy it sucks to be a journalist (and why people do it anyway)http://nataliaantonova.com/2014/09/06/why-it-sucks-to-be-a-journalist-and-why-people-do-it-anyway/
http://nataliaantonova.com/2014/09/06/why-it-sucks-to-be-a-journalist-and-why-people-do-it-anyway/#commentsSat, 06 Sep 2014 15:12:20 +0000http://nataliaantonova.com/?p=4488More Why it sucks to be a journalist (and why people do it anyway)]]>In the West, the news is a commodity, a product. And the customer is always right. If you’re not giving the customer what they want – you’re usually screwed.

In places like Russia, the news is more like a government-owned resource. And the government gets to set the agenda on how said resource will be exploited. If you’re not giving the government what it wants (or getting a little too uppity or bothersome) – you’re usually screwed.

I’ve worked for both English-language Russian state media and Western independent media. I’ve been lucky so far. Lucky for having intelligent editors who set good standards, for being able to speak my mind, for being able to walk away when facing censorship. Lucky that I’m still, at this stage in the game, able to feed my family (on a diminishing income). Lucky that I’m not an exploited freelancer in a conflict zone (for now, anyway).

But the more online harassment I experience, the more threats I receive, the more insults (many of them gender-based, others aimed at my complicated cultural and ethnic heritage) I hear, the more I have to wonder if I’m tough enough.

When I was writing about the fateful 2010 winter election in Kiev, there was an incident I’ve been loath to talk about. Perhaps a couple of my friends know. It made me feel vulnerable and unprofessional at the time. I certainly didn’t want to complain and make it seem as though I was afraid of anything.

I had argued with a security guard near a polling station. He insisted I couldn’t be on the sidewalk, talking to people. He thumped me on my chest and pushed me hard. I went flying on the black ice that seemed to encrust every surface that winter, landing on my back, hitting my head in the process. After the immediate shock and pain wore off, I let a woman who had just voted help me up. The guard had scampered off. I went back to doing my job.

The incident stayed with me, because the pain stayed. I had problems with my back before, but that one bad fall caused chronic pain that lasted for over a year. After I got pregnant, I had to seek out specialists capable of helping pregnant women with severe back pain. The pain sapped my strength and bank account. It still flares up every once in a while. X-rays so far have been inconclusive, and I am convinced that a part of it starts in the mind. Chronic pain is complicated, but it has its roots. Some are abstract.

People don’t like journalists – for reasons are both abstract and concrete. People take, ah, liberties with journalists, especially in countries with brittle regimes and a high tolerance for violence. People don’t like it when journalists tell them what they don’t want to hear. People don’t like it that journalists take money from either governments or corporations or NGOs – i.e., people don’t like it that journalists have a powerful need to eat every once in a while.

I’ve been both a reporter and a pundit – a reporter takes risks in the field, only to be shouted at for bias. A pundit feels like Cassandra with tongue in place, but no one listening anyway. Everyone is down in the comments section, bitching about how you’re the wrong ethnicity to have an opinion on some matter, while others are busy e-mailing you detailed odes on how awesome it would be when you’re finally gang-raped.

“You go out there and do your job!” People shout at me on the internet, from the comfort of their homes. I’m remembering the first story I did for The Moscow News – on a neo-Nazi stabbing in southwest Moscow. I visited the scene of the crime, talked to the neighbors of the victim, talked to the crying wife on the phone outside. On my way back, I had to walk through an apple orchard at dusk. Two guys began following me. They weren’t neo-Nazis, they were thugs, enraged at seeing a reporter asking questions “without permission” on their territory. Didn’t I know I could be “punished”? There was no one else around. We were in the middle of a major city at peacetime, but in a second it was brought home to me – how unsafe I was. I let them catch up with me, joked with them, bummed a cigarette off of one of them, discussed my story. I smiled at them. They eventually began smiling back.

Female journalists are lectured on “using our looks” and following “the principles of feminism.” We’re still seen as women first and journalists second – hello, “mother of three” headline! – but we must pretend as though this isn’t really so in our work.

In the company of bad men, however, there are no illusions. You appeal directly to their strength. A strong man wouldn’t need to prove his strength by hurting a girl-reporter, would he? Except sometimes, he would.

Our readers hate us. We hate each other. When I joke about dick-measuring contests on Twitter, I’m not really joking. Professional solidarity usually only appears when someone gets their head cut off – to be quickly forgotten.

Everyone knows that you don’t get ahead by being the best. You get ahead by proving that the others are worthless.

If you’re a young woman, prepare for the possibility of getting harassed, raped, or simply used by colleagues you look up to. And then, of course, they’ll tell their friends that you only got that one gig because [insert body part, outfit, etc]. Hoity toity male journalists will punish you for admiring them as surely as they will punish you for not admiring them.

In times of conflict and tension, you will be seen as a tool first and a person second – by everyone from the security services to Jim-Bob who’s never frozen his ass off at a demo that swiftly erupts into violence when the boys with the batons move in, but will still write your bosses and demand you be fired for your “pro-[insert whatever it is that Jim-Bob doesn’t like at that moment] coverage.”

In a conflict zone, you will be accused of propaganda if any particular side appears to trust you – though trust is how you get people talking, how you get them to let you in, and how you get them to not kill you.

The late Andrei Stenin got the pro-Russia rebels in eastern Ukraine to trust him – so now I’m constantly being told that he deserved his death. Meanwhile a friend has reported extensively on the right-wing Azov battalion on the Ukraine side – only to be accused of being a “Nazi sympathizer” in the process.

When you acknowledge the pressure you are under, you’re weak and hysterical. When you don’t acknowledge it, it begins to do your head in.

I was in a bar in Kiev with a cousin last month, when your typical Douchebag Expat Stereotype who’d only been in the country for a couple of weeks but had oodles of opinions he was dying to share sidled up to us. In the course of trying not to talk to him, I found out that he follows the work of a friend of mine who has been reporting on the armed conflict in the Donbass. “He’s just so biased! And so cocky!” Douchebag Expat Stereotype ranted.

“So why don’t you go out there and show him how it’s done,” I replied – then instantly regretted my words.

The last thing you want to do is give a self-assured blowhard the idea that he can do this kind of job.

Meanwhile, one of the defining characteristics of the human race is our need to tell stories, to bear witness – and to pass the information on. I think that people tend to get into journalism because they’re human. And a little crazy. It’s a calling – in the sense that a pied piper is playing a tune somewhere. You stumble off the safer path and follow the song. You live to regret it and you live to love it – sometimes in equal measure.

]]>http://nataliaantonova.com/2014/09/06/why-it-sucks-to-be-a-journalist-and-why-people-do-it-anyway/feed/17NataliaIm-not-anybodys ygritte saysgirls see more blood ygritte saysbut first well live ygritte says